Man, That's Weird!
Wavelet has tagged me so I guess I’ll give you my five weirdest habits. Well ok, most of you already know them, like things I do when I get drunk and nervous, and so on. In that case I’ll give you my five weirdest habits that no-one or almost no-one knows about.
1. Canned tuna. Yes I did just write ‘canned tuna’. When I was in High School I moved into a small apartment with my father when my parent’s marriage was in its death throes. Since my father was out of town for three days a week, it was like living on my own without paying rent. I had a lot of fun, but I also had to buy my own groceries. I quickly found out that canned tuna was a cheap and delicious meal. It could make melts, casseroles (or my abortive attempts at casseroles), salads, wraps, even a gumbo with rice and pinto beans (which I think stands out as the worst meal I have ever had). While at college I never really ate it, but once I moved out and had to start cooking again, canned tuna has again taken its rightful place in my diet.
2. Humor at the expense of my deeply held beliefs. Some of you might know I do this. When I’m around people who vaguely know my religious and political beliefs but are not the closest of old friends I will often mock my beliefs. To do this I collect many Catholic jokes. I have meet few people who know as many priest and alter boy jokes as me. Or Sectarian jokes that always come out worse for the Catholics. Likewise with politics I make fun of being a conservative republican all the time. “Sure I voted for Bush” I’ll say “But only because I want him to invade Azerbaijan.” Needless to say I love jokes about Dick Cheney, Condi, and Rumsfield.
3. Sweeney Todd lyrics. I never go more than two or three days without running through a large chunk of the lyrics in Sweeney Todd. I do it when I’m walking. I’ll just be thinking about whatever, than I’ll start humming a song from the musical. Then I’ll jump from song to song going through the lyrics and melodies in no particular order. I sometimes shift over into a Little Night Music too: Humming Send in the Clowns, or Now/Later/Soon. This might sound crazier than it is. After all Sondheim is one of the greatest English language word smiths and so you can play around with his double and triple entendres for a long time. My favorite song being They all Deserve to Die.
4. Buying CDs like reference books. Often I’ll by CDs but just to have around for reference, even though I know I won’t listen to that often. Things like ancient Greek chant, Renaissance Spanish pilgrim ballads, sung Russian Orthodox liturgies, early Louis Armstrong recordings, recordings of early 20th Century musicians playing classical repertoire pieces (of which I can get much better new recordings), and contemporary eastern European composers. Mostly these just sit around and collect dust, but I love them, and if any one ever needs to compare Homeric odes with Russian chant I’m the guy to talk to.
5. I save articles from major on-line reference sites. After I check something on the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Dictionary of National Biography I always save the article to my hard drive. I have no idea why. These sites will be around longer than I will, its not like I need to save them from disappearing. Most of them are also free and require no registration. Granted you have to be at a school with a subscription to the Dictionary of National Biography to access it, but still why bother saving the articles? I now have a large collection of these sites’ articles for no real reason. This is combined with my habit of saving news reports, commentary pieces, and journal articles about major world events. I has very upset when I had to re-format my hard drive and I lost my collection of articles about Iran’s nuclear program, and Ukraine’s orange revolution and ever thing else. Again I have no idea why I do this. All I know is, I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t have a large library of saved articles, historical and contemporary, on my computer.
1. Canned tuna. Yes I did just write ‘canned tuna’. When I was in High School I moved into a small apartment with my father when my parent’s marriage was in its death throes. Since my father was out of town for three days a week, it was like living on my own without paying rent. I had a lot of fun, but I also had to buy my own groceries. I quickly found out that canned tuna was a cheap and delicious meal. It could make melts, casseroles (or my abortive attempts at casseroles), salads, wraps, even a gumbo with rice and pinto beans (which I think stands out as the worst meal I have ever had). While at college I never really ate it, but once I moved out and had to start cooking again, canned tuna has again taken its rightful place in my diet.
2. Humor at the expense of my deeply held beliefs. Some of you might know I do this. When I’m around people who vaguely know my religious and political beliefs but are not the closest of old friends I will often mock my beliefs. To do this I collect many Catholic jokes. I have meet few people who know as many priest and alter boy jokes as me. Or Sectarian jokes that always come out worse for the Catholics. Likewise with politics I make fun of being a conservative republican all the time. “Sure I voted for Bush” I’ll say “But only because I want him to invade Azerbaijan.” Needless to say I love jokes about Dick Cheney, Condi, and Rumsfield.
3. Sweeney Todd lyrics. I never go more than two or three days without running through a large chunk of the lyrics in Sweeney Todd. I do it when I’m walking. I’ll just be thinking about whatever, than I’ll start humming a song from the musical. Then I’ll jump from song to song going through the lyrics and melodies in no particular order. I sometimes shift over into a Little Night Music too: Humming Send in the Clowns, or Now/Later/Soon. This might sound crazier than it is. After all Sondheim is one of the greatest English language word smiths and so you can play around with his double and triple entendres for a long time. My favorite song being They all Deserve to Die.
4. Buying CDs like reference books. Often I’ll by CDs but just to have around for reference, even though I know I won’t listen to that often. Things like ancient Greek chant, Renaissance Spanish pilgrim ballads, sung Russian Orthodox liturgies, early Louis Armstrong recordings, recordings of early 20th Century musicians playing classical repertoire pieces (of which I can get much better new recordings), and contemporary eastern European composers. Mostly these just sit around and collect dust, but I love them, and if any one ever needs to compare Homeric odes with Russian chant I’m the guy to talk to.
5. I save articles from major on-line reference sites. After I check something on the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Dictionary of National Biography I always save the article to my hard drive. I have no idea why. These sites will be around longer than I will, its not like I need to save them from disappearing. Most of them are also free and require no registration. Granted you have to be at a school with a subscription to the Dictionary of National Biography to access it, but still why bother saving the articles? I now have a large collection of these sites’ articles for no real reason. This is combined with my habit of saving news reports, commentary pieces, and journal articles about major world events. I has very upset when I had to re-format my hard drive and I lost my collection of articles about Iran’s nuclear program, and Ukraine’s orange revolution and ever thing else. Again I have no idea why I do this. All I know is, I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t have a large library of saved articles, historical and contemporary, on my computer.
1 Comments:
That reminds me of...Dan's Tuna of Death! Incidentally, I just told that story to a bunch of freshmen in the kitchen this morning, and they were most amused. (It felt weird to be the senior, passing on the lore of the Ghosts of Classes Past.)
--Catherine
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home